Friday, June 15, 2012

Chagrin Falls High School publishes mobile apps – and the fun has only just begun

I’m pleased to report that a project I had been nursing for
most of this year has reached a milestone. At the beginning of this last
semester, I kicked off a track inside our local high school (Chagrin
Falls High School) to get teams of students collaborating on building
mobile apps – not just programming but developing all of the skills required
for a successful app launch.

Both apps are simple to begin with – BUT remember, these are
the work product of a new and educational program where high school students
work in small teams focusing on developing programming, product management and
marketing skills.

These apps also generate usage analytics (nothing personally
identifiable) and include a feedback page. Students will review the analytics
and user feedback to improve future versions – so please download these apps, give
them a spin, and provide feedback. Do it
for the kids!

Of course, I didn’t run this program alone – I worked with The Chagrin Falls Dads’ Club and the Chagrin
Falls High School administration with support from Microsoft (who provided
mobile phones, development software and some technical support) and PreEmptive
Solutions (who provided monitoring software to help measure app usage).

The objective of the program is to
organize students into teams where they would not only build a mobile app, but
publish that app in a global marketplace and monitor its adoption and usage “in
the wild.”

The goal of the program is to teach students the importance
of the “total lifecycle” of an app from idea to creation to publication to
adoption to continuous improvement. Obviously, today’s high school students are
truly an “app generation” and it always kills me that the myriad of career
choices beyond development are never highlighted – and given that this is an
exploding multi-billion dollar market and I’m based here in Ohio – I wanted to
make sure our local students knew what was available to them right now. What
should be built? For whom? How is my app doing and what can I do better? Chagrin’s
students will have a head start in knowing how to answer these questions in a
global marketplace.

The process included organizing the early volunteers into
teams and working with them to develop ideas that they could bring to market. Microsoft
provided phones and software and had a technical resource drop in for some
general instruction as well. PreEmptive Solutions provided the analytic
software so that students could measure how their apps were doing.

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About Me

Grew-up in Westbeth, the world's largest artist community. (www.westbeth.org) I rebelled and went into the world of commercial software where I have been for over 30 years. I am currently EVP & Chief Strategy Officer at PreEmptive Solutions. (www.preemptive.com)